In recent years, group use of a printing output device such as a copying machine and a printer as a network printer has been becoming pervasive, and various suggestions have been made so that each client can use such a device conveniently. For example, in a printer system disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No.8-272557/1996 (Tokukaihei 8-272557, published on Oct. 18, 1996), printing job information such as printing job waiting condition sent to a printing output device can be easily checked at a printing data supply device such as a personal computer. However, if a processing error is occurred at the printing output device or a user desires to print out confidential print, the user has to perform operations at the printing output device. Therefore, if the configuration mentioned in the above publication is applied in such a situation, the user has to go back to the printing data supply device to check the printing job information after performing the above operations at the printing output device, which would be very inconvenient for the user.
In such a case that operations at a printing output device are required as mentioned above, a printer system disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No.8-307583/1996 (Tokukaihei 8-307583, published on Nov. 22, 1996) is effective to solve the problem. This printer system indicates a list of waiting printing jobs including the printing jobs pending at a printing output device, and enables a user to check the content on the list. In addition, the user can make next directions such as altering the once directed job content or directing printing, based on the content checked on the job list.
Therefore, it has become essential recently that information about a directed printing job can be checked not only at a printing data supply device by which the printing job is directed, but also at a printing data output device.
A configuration which enables a user to check printing job information at a printing output device will be explained as follows, taking confidential print function, a printing function, as an example. FIG. 13 is a view showing a configuration of an information processing system 1 in which a computer 2 as a printing data supply device and printers 3 as printing data output devices are connected via network. In some cases, the configuration includes a plurality of computers 2. Confidential print function is a printing function designed to enhance security for private printing. Under the function, the printer 3 does not print out the job content immediately after a user directs a printing job via the computer 2; the user has to input a password at the printer 3 to direct output before acquiring the desired printing output. To use Confidential print function, the user name, the job name, and the user's password should be inputted via a printer driver setting screen of the computer 2.
When the printer 3 can handle PDL (Page Discript Language) such as PS (PostScript: the trademark of Adobe Systems Inc.) and HP-PCL or PCL (Hewlett-Packard Printer Control Language: the trademark of Hewlett-Packard) as shown in FIG. 14, a PS driver screen or a PCL driver screen is invoked to direct a printing job from the computer 2. For example, to send “Meeting Document.xls” among the confidential print jobs shown in FIG. 14 to the printer 3, double-click the icon of the file “Meeting Document” prepared using a certain application software package to open the file, as shown in FIG. 15. Next, choose Print from the File menu to open the Print screen. Then, choose the printer 3 to be used for printing and choose Property.
Then, a PS driver setting screen shown in FIG. 16(a) appears, and if the radio button for Confidential Print in the Retention Print tag is checked, the gray-out of the job ID input section disappears and the user name, the printing job name, and the password can be inputted. In addition to manual input by the user, the user name and the printing job name can be automatically inputted from the log-in name of the computer 2 and from the file name on the application software, respectively, for easier user setting. Suppose “YAMADA” and “Meeting Document” are inputted as the user name and the printing job name, respectively, then the screen goes back to the Print screen shown in FIG. 17 and the printing job can be directed. Similar procedures are taken when using PCL.
Thus, the PS data or the PCL data is sent to the printer 3, together with printing style information such as confidential print function setting and printing sheet information, and page information including the user name and the printing job name. As shown in FIG. 14, these data are stored as pending data in a specified area in a hard disk 3a, and the user name and the printing job name in the page information are displayed by a display control section 3b on the screen of a display device (printing job information display section) 3c, which is a LCD display device or the like installed in the printer 3, as printing job information showing that the file is waiting to be directed for printing. As other confidential print jobs are sent following the same procedure, user names and printing job names are listed on the screen of the display device 3c as shown in FIG. 14.
To print out the confidential print job, the user directs output via the above list indication using the password set on the printer driver setting screen. Then, the PS data or the PCL data for the confidential print job is read out from the hard disk 3a to a PDL data storage area in a memory 3d, function processing such as rasterization is conducted, and the data is developed to a bit image in a RIS (Raster Image Processor) data storage area in the memory 3d. At this point, the page information is separated from the PS data or the PCL data and read out in a specified area in the memory 3d. The developed RIP data is converted to an image on a photoconductor drum 3f by a LSU/engine control section 3e according to the page information and thus printed out.
Generally, a display device including a LCD display device or the like which is installed in a printing output device such as the printer 3 to show a printing job list is inferior to a display device in a printing data supply device such as the computer 2 in terms of display capability, due to the limitation on the number of characters displayable or on the fonts or languages which can be indicated according to the performance of a display driver. On the other hand, electronic data to be outputted take various forms including documents prepared using various types of application software, Web pages, and e-mails. In addition, with the increasing use of Internet, not only Japanese but also English and other languages are used to show the file names of the above electronic data. Despite of the need for a printing output device equipped with a display device capable of being used in such an environment, such requirements have not been satisfied yet in realities.
Therefore, the display capability of the printer 3 connected to the network varies as shown in FIG. 13, according to the type of the printer connected, and some printers can indicate Japanese katakana, alphanumerics, and other special characters, while some can also handle Japanese kanji. For this reason, there may be problems where printing job information such as a user name or a printing job name which can be inputted and checked at a printing data supply device cannot be displayed correctly at a display device of a printing output device. For example, in the case that the display device of a printing output device cannot display Japanese but the printing job information set by a printing data supply device is Japanese, the indication on the display device of the printing output device does not show correct Japanese characters, as shown in FIG. 18. In the case of FIG. 18, since several users direct confidential print function continuously, printing jobs “Kaigi Shiryou” (Meeting Document), “Shiyou” (Specifications), “Fukui” (a user name), “Nitteihyou” (Itinerary), and “Jushoroku” (Address), named in Japanese kanji in FIG. 14, are continuously indicated on the printing job list with characters transformed. In such a situation, it is difficult for a user to recognize which job is the one the user desires and to choose the job from the list on the display device of the printing output device.